


Out of the Woods

by vampgirltish



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: Abrupt Ending, Angst, Breakups, F/M, car crashes, honeymoon phase, no resolution?, song-inspired fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 12:05:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5868772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vampgirltish/pseuds/vampgirltish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His arm around your waist. Curled up on the couch. Cuddled close. A movie in the background, but neither of you were really watching. His fingers were going through your hair. Everything felt right, felt easy. It felt like there wasn’t anything wrong in the world. It felt like all that mattered in the world was that he was close with you and your heartbeats were thump-thumping in sync.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of the Woods

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by "out of the woods" by taylor swift!
> 
> warnings for car crashes, descriptions of hospitals and injuries...

_ His arm around your waist. Curled up on the couch. Cuddled close. A movie in the background, but neither of you were really watching. His fingers were going through your hair. Everything felt right, felt easy. It felt like there wasn’t anything wrong in the world. It felt like all that mattered in the world was that he was close with you and your heartbeats were thump-thumping in sync. _

It was all so simple. Back then, it felt like he didn’t have to try- didn’t have to try to hold onto a girl for longer than one night. He’d slept with so many girls but nothing could compare to how he felt with you. It wasn’t even the sex that mattered, it never was about the sex. It was about how he felt lying next to you, laughing at nothing, talking for hours until he remembered he should sleep before a session tomorrow. It was waking up to coffee together, sipping out of mugs that said ‘his’ and ‘hers’. It was the engagement ring he had in a box, shoved in the back of his bedside table drawer because he didn’t have the balls to do it and now he’d lost the chance. He’d lost you and there was no chance he was going to get you back.

_ “Smile!” you said, giggling and holding up a baby-blue polaroid camera. He put on a dopey, goofy grin and you giggled some more, taking the picture. Letting the photo feed out of the camera, you shook it to develop it, then held it in front of the two of you. _

_ Your eyes were squinted shut from flash and his face was scrunched up from his goofy grin. You both laughed, looking at it for a long time. Then you spoke, “Let’s take another one.” _

_ He made a noise of approval, and you held up the camera again. You pulled a smile, but he surprised you by kissing your cheek. The photo fed out, you developed it, shook it, and then you looked at it. It was a really cute picture. You were smiling, your cheeks flushed from surprise. Everything about how you treated each other was juvenile, but that was because that was how you two were. He was childish and you liked that about him. You had innocence and naivety in addition to the years beyond your mind, and he liked that about you. _

_ In a world full of greys, you were the first spark of color he’d gotten to know. In all his years in a band before, he wrote about black and white disguises, trying to expose color in people, trying to let them see the world for the beautiful, colorful place it was. But it took you, your color, your spark...to make him see the color he worked so hard to show others. _

Every single passing day, he regretted letting you go. Thoughts were bouncing in his head faster than he really wanted them to, and he really couldn’t stop them now. He had work in fifteen minutes, but they’d understand if he was late. Probably. He couldn’t drive if he was busy thinking about everything, making useless webs of connections in his head about how everything was wrong.

He couldn’t help it. Couldn’t stop himself from wondering if he’d ever make it out of this uncertainty. He wanted you back. But did you want him back? He didn’t know if he was out of the woods, didn’t know if he was in the clear to ask you, to invite you back into his life. He’d felt so empty, so worthless without you in it. The world had become so black and white without you.

~*~*~

Something made it hard to forget. Things that mean a lot to a person are difficult to forget. Even though you and Danny had broken it off, promised to stay friends, you talked less and less as he got busier and busier. Two bands, two web shows, occasional guest starring, panels, conventions...and all you had was a job filing papers at an office. He’d always brought you hot chocolate at work when he bought himself some tea. He always thought of you. Left notes with your lunches and texted you every minute of the day. He could never be away from you for more than the average workday, and even then it still seemed like he could not. 

He was so busy now that it felt like he’d forgotten about you. Forgotten the two years, five months, one week, two days, six hours, fifty eight minutes, forty two seconds that you guys had been together. Some of those numbers were arbitrary and guessed, but the point still stood. It felt like those years that you’d spend together were pointless. Were nothing to him.

_ “C’mere,” he’d said. Pulled you close to him by your fingers in his. Anywhere he’d asked, you’d follow. You’d follow him right to the ends of the earth with how much you loved him. He let go of your hands, reaching behind his neck and unclasping the necklace he had around his neck. He put it around yours. It was longer on you than him, but it rested comfortably against your chest. The seashell design, silver plated on a black cord, felt like a piece of him was yours. He loved that necklace, but he wanted to give it to you. _

_ But even in the air of that moment, something felt wrong, horribly uncomfortably wrong. He can’t stay in one place, he pulls you close to him, dancing in a half-attempted revolving motion. His lips kissed you gently, slowly, softly, and he said, “I’m going to be a lot busier now.” _

_ “I know.” _

_ Like your relationship would stand a chance if he kept being out all the time and you had nothing. Like you’d be able to be okay when he could hardly be in the house long enough to grab a bagel on his way out the door, stumbling over untied shoelaces. _

_ You two were paper airplanes, caught in a gust of wind. His moved west, and yours nosedived right to the ground. _

But of course, you couldn’t say you didn’t love him. You broke up with him because you were scared. Because you didn’t want him to leave you, you didn’t want to be lonely, you didn’t want him to forget you. It turned out that he forgot about you so much more quickly when you’d let him go.

You still loved him. Desperately. And you wanted nothing more than to see him again, kiss him, be close to him. It was so hard being away when you felt that tension, that cord pulling you back to him. A red string of fate was impossible to cut, no matter how much you’d tried a year ago.

You found yourself digging in your drawers, in an old jewelry box full of too-small rings, too-big necklaces, and earrings that have broken. Reaching down you knew exactly what you were getting into when you pulled out a baby-blue drawstring pouch. Opening it, you knew it was there. You pulled it out. That silver plated seashell he’d left you. The black cord just the same as it had been. You sighed. It was impossible to fight that urge.

You reached around your neck and clipped it on. Went to your closet, found an old Rush shirt he’d left at your house and one of his red flannels. You tugged them on, reveling in the fact that they still both smelled like him. You missed him so much. Much more than you’d thought you would. You didn’t know if you could welcome him in though. You built so many walls for yourself that it was damn near impossible to break them down again. It had taken him to help break down your walls the first time, and it had been him who had caused them to build back up in his absence. 

~*~*~

It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you

There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could do

_ He was singing with you, blasting the music loud through the speakers. Everything was so happy, streetlights streaking by and the faces of people becoming blobs on the sides of the road. He was probably going five over, but he didn’t care. It was you and him in his SUV, all the windows rolled down, wind whipping in your hair. _

_ The music was loud. Very loud. _

_ The impact was equally as loud. _

_ The music had blocked out the car horn of the car who was running a red light. _

_ The car had crashed more towards the back of the car, not getting either of you two, but the airbags went off, smacking your heads back into the headrests. The doors were crumpled, and Danny’s hand instinctively went to reach for you, trying to find you. The car was out of control, and your car flipped. It rolled over the street, across the intersection, to the side of the road. Upside down, pushed against a bus-stop sign, the pole bent outwards, like a spindly spider leg. You felt the blood rushing to your head, and looked over to see Danny’s hair hanging straight down, his eyes shut, blood coming from his nose. _

_ Your voice reached panic quickly, “Danny? Baby, are you okay? Please wake up. Baby!” He groaned, which told you he was alive at least. Thank god. “Danny, babe. Are you okay?” He didn’t respond that moment, and you heard the wail of sirens. The rest of it was a blur. You screamed at the paramedics to get him first- help him first, oh my god he’s bleeding. You were screaming so much, everything becoming so stressed and blurred that you felt dizzy. Everything was blending together until you got to the hospital. You had a concussion but nothing too dramatic. Danny had gotten most of the damage. _

_ He had a dark, purpling bruise blossoming across his chest from the impact with the steering wheel. The glass from the back windows had flung to the front and left a deep cut on his arm. The doctors were rushing around him, rushing around you. Because of your concussion, everything felt blurry and dizzy. They were looking at him and in and out of the doctor speak and jargon, you heard ‘deep laceration’ and ‘stitches’. He was still unconscious, and you hoped he woke up...please god let him wake up.  _

_ He didn’t wake up until after he got the stitches, after they put him under anesthesia, put twenty stitches in his arm, wrapped around his chest with some soft cotton so he wouldn’t bump it anymore, gave him pain medication for the bruises, the back injuries, everything else. They gave you some more medication, some dark sunglasses to block the light, had you orally fill out the documents, talk about insurance, bills. You couldn’t think too hard about some of them or your head would hurt.  _

_ When he woke up, his eyes caught yours, and he started crying. The pain was too much, the reality was too much. Everything felt like it was too much. _

“Dude, you got in a car crash?”

“Yeah, it was horrible.”

“What happened?”

_ You were crying with him. You were crying happily because he was alive, awake, but crying sadly because why did this have to happen. He looked down, saw his arm, the gauze over it with a thick red line of blood that had soaked through the cotton. He looked back up at you. Tears came faster now, spilling heavily over his cheeks. You got up, paused for a moment to let your head adjust...blackness and dizzy feelings swirled in your vision. Then you all but crawled up next to him. He kissed you, cheeks still wet from tears, and he sighed. _

_ “How could this have happened to us, baby?” _

_ “I don’t know,” you said, voice soft. _

_ “I love you. So much. Forever.” His voice was barely above a whisper. Those words were only meant for you. _

“I was with...an ex of mine...we got t-boned by another car who ran a red light. Uh.. I had to get twenty stitches in my arm, a big bruise on my chest. It was really bad. She got a concussion.”

“Is that why you have a phobia of car crashes?”

“Yeah. I would’ve been fine if I hadn’t had the music so loud.”

He still beat himself up about it. He couldn’t hear that stupid song without crying anymore, thinking about the crash, you bruised up, concussed, him with stitches and a half-moon of bruises across his chest.

Then his mind always raced to two months after that. When it was too much.

_ Danny’s head had been racing. He still felt guilty about that car crash. He was the more injured of the two of you but he still was hurting more internally. He would take millions more stitches everywhere in his body if it meant that it would have never happened.  _

_ Then you came home from work, tired. Exhausted. Mascara had darkened onto your cheeks and the undersides of your eyes from you rubbing them, crying. You must have had a long day at work. A really long day. _

_ “Hey, baby,” he said, voice gentle, trying to be kind to you. _

_ Tears were already forming as you spoke. “I can’t do this anymore, Danny.” _

_ “What?” _

_ “I can’t be with you.” _

_ Head in overdrive now. “What? Why? Baby, I--” _

_ “You’re never here, and I get so lonely. Work is getting so hard for me, and I just...I can’t--I just--” You couldn’t get out your ideas, couldn’t explain why you felt so horrible, why this relationship was drowning to you. _

_ It wasn’t, but the paranoia made it so easy to think it was. _

_ “I need to let you go. For your freedom. So you don’t have to be tied to me anymore. Danny, I--” _

_ Still, everything was horrible to you. Wrong to you. Paranoia turned everything into a demon, into a monster.  _

But now was a different day. He wanted you back, wanted to show you that he understood the paranoia, wanted to make it better. He wanted to be there for you.

So he reached for his phone. Looked at all the messages you’d tried to send him, each further and further in time. First hours apart. Then days. Weeks. Months. Then not at all. The last one was four months ago. You’d just said something simple.

**> Hey Danny. Hope you’re doing alright out there. Don’t work too hard.**

He took a breath, tapping your contact.

Ring...ring...ring...

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to rachel, my dear love, for cheering me on in writing this  
> youre fantastic. i love you.
> 
> hope you enjoy my sad.


End file.
